Forum; Talking Straight to Teenagers

for your support! The parent that signs the permission slip for the kid to go to class, the parent who would vote for pro-choice issues, is the parent who's going to talk to their child most. This is Olive Graham. This week on forum, Carol Cacell, author of Straight from the Heart. Remember, at their age, they're interested in something called BOY. That's their interest, not issues about entering into meds and school, or equal opportunity. From the Center for Telecommunication Services, the University of Texas at Austin, welcome

to forum. I'm Olive Graham. The parent that signs the permission slip for the kid to go to class, the parent who would vote for pro-choice issues, is the parent who's going to talk to their child most. Look, if you feel that sex is a terrible, evil, dirty thing, you're not going to talk to your kid about. Carol Cacell, author of Straight from the Heart, how to talk to your teenagers about love and sex. Today, forum features a discussion with sex educator and author Carol Cacell. Her latest publication, Straight from the Heart, gives vital information about how to talk candidly and informatively with teens in an age of ignorance as well as hyper-awareness of sexual matters. Frankness and honesty are required as this generation of teens must face the added public health issue of AIDS as they reach sexual maturation. Dr. Cacell defines her target group.

Generally, I'm talking about kids in high school, and I'm cutting through all of the cultural ethnic, racial, economic, because if you're 14 or 15, you're 14 or 15. It's amazing how much the economics of things do influence their choices, though, as it does with everything. So you do find kids of, say, if their parents earn $100,000, that teenager is going to have different concerns, then a kid who's on three and $4,000 and $10,000 worth of income. But generally, what I'm talking about is that great middle of all of that, that person that's in the middle of that, that isn't necessarily at the, the ebb of being poor nor rich, but though, I guess what you would call middle class America, whether you're black, brown, Asian, white, those things are not important at all when you get into the middle class in America. And this broad population is the one bombarded by TV movies, all of the media influences that affect glove and sex.

Well, it's interesting about high school today. It looks a bit like the college campuses in 1958. It's as if the 60s and the 70s didn't happen in one way. You know, clothing, you look at the way they're dressed, some of their attitudes, they want to be somebody in life, they want to save money, they want to have a, you know, a Porsche, these kinds of attitudes. So it's not the activism of the 60s at all, it's a, and it's for feminism. When you're on high school campuses, it's if Ms. Magazine doesn't exist, they're reading 17, Cosmo and Glamour. But feminism is not alive and well on high school campuses. Why would that be the case? There's going to drop of a torch somewhere in these generations. I don't know where we dropped it, but all you can see is the result of it. It is as if it's a backlash. It's not backlash. I think it's just that remoteness. You see, this is a generation of young women who the choice to have an abortion has been part of their life experience. They know no other life. The notion they can go to medical school or be an engineer or get on national television as a newscaster, that's their life. Where the generation, it wasn't our life.

We fought hard for those gains and we sort of handed it to them thinking they'd appreciate it as the old saying goes, well, this is as natural to them as McDonald's hamburger stands. What they have is the choice then. They just don't feel there's any issue here. Remember that they're young. We're talking high school. We're talking 16, 17 when the world's your ballpark anyway. When you begin to talk to them about the double standard though, on a personal level, then they start saying, aha, it is like that. That hasn't changed a bit. So what you see is you see feminism is almost nonexistent, but sexism is alive and well, and the girls know it, but they don't know what to do about it. Well feminism offered an answer at one point. Yes, but this answer to go out and be somebody do something, climb a mountain for them. Remember, at their age, they're interested in something called BOY. That's their interest, not issues about entering into med school or equal opportunity. They're not interested. They want the BOY. Okay, what is it that they actually want? Is

it the attention? Well, today, the major of success in high school is not a straight-a student. It is being adored, wanted, loved by the greatest guy on campus. Being popular. Remember popular? Well, popular is still important in high school today. More so than it was 10 years ago. So the notion of kids going on their own, say in the 70s, everybody went into the group, and the idea of dating and going steady was, I mean, that was something only a nerd with even think of. Today's campus, the most popular with the kids, are all in couples. All right, is this a population that's putting off marriage the way earlier populations did? They talk about getting married when they're 22, 23. I mean, that's the age that they see themselves. Now they may indeed wait until they're 30, 32, but we don't know. How old is the parent of this broad group of people? Let's just take a 15-year-old give or take. The parent will be somewhere the low end of age would be 35. Most likely the parent's going to be in midlife, 40-45-ish, that kind of age. Now, if you look back at

that person's history, you're seeing someone who's coming of age was the 60s. So they have a very different experience than their teenager has. For instance, the notion in the 60s on a high school campus to say, well, when I grow up, I want to have a condo and I want to have all this money, that was not the talk of the day. So parents today are looking at their youngsters and saying, who is this person? What have I done? This little materialistic person in my life. So it's family ties. It's family ties. You think about family ties that is the most popular show amongst teenagers. Cosby, family ties, growing pains, squeaky clean kinds of shows. What scares kids that age? Well, right now that used to be nuclear war up until just I'd say this year, which is still a concern of young people. And that's the big abstract fear that they have. Nowadays it's AIDS and the vet level. And then the other level is they're afraid they're not going to get a good job. They sense a scarcity

out there. Well, remember, they want such a good job. I mean, it's not being a carpenter or finding happiness. They want to go to the top. They want to make a lot of money. They want to be Leia Coker. Now, I think they do. Or at least Henry Ford. So the problem that they have is they have this fear. You see that there won't be space or room for them. When it's their turn, they often say to me, oh, it's so different when you were growing up. It's well today. I mean, it's so competitive. What do you mean? It's always been competitive, but they have a very narrow vision of how hard it will be. Do they have any perception of national issues, the national economy? Does their curriculum that they're exposed to? Not any more than we did. Not any more than we did. You know, if you had to ask them, for instance, who's the Secretary of State, they wouldn't have the biggest idea. Most of them have no idea who the governor of their state is. So politics for them are very remote and unimportant. Most high school kids, what is important, you say, is

doing the right thing, getting the grades, getting in the right college. What else are they learning at this age? They're learning all the things that we learned, you know, the usual math history, that kind of content at school. But then, you know, there's the other messages. But how else are they being socialized? The other messages do the right thing to get the right job. So stay in line, be polite. It's the delkarnagy attitude of high schools today. It's very much that you have to have this right thing. There's a knack to life. In other words, if you learn how to smile, say this, say that. You too can get ahead. You too can be president of the United States. So what you see on campuses, and I speak to thousands of teenage kids, is they look alike. Where's the green hair? I love it. When I see some of these green hair, I'm so thrilled. I'm so happy. I see someone dressed in something outrageous. I go and I embrace them, you know, the notion of debate or controversy to them. It's like speaking a language like Russian

to them. When you talk about that, controversy is interesting. Debate, you know, think about issues. They look at you with almost a blank look that is not what is it for them? It's the middle course. Be popular. Be nice. Be liked. What do they seek for entertainment? Well, the video parlors are rather out nowadays. Okay, that was in for a short amount of time. The big thing in entertainment today is the under 21 nightclub. For instance, they're called things like Club Rio, or something Café, the American Café, Rick's Place, those kinds of titles. And they're all over America. I was just in Pesca, Isle in Maine, and they had one of these under 21 clubs, usually a DJ, a big dance floor, huge dance floor, lots of lights going flashing on and off, and a juice bar. Is there any validity to the concerns of some parents in high places who are attacking rock and roll, attacking words, they're turning children's minds to jelly and words. If you're playing backwards, they say weird and strange

things. Yeah. Yeah. What kid places all this is going over there? No, it's the same thing it's always been. If you look back, you can see people breaking Elvis Presley records on their knees. He was going to lead us to ruin. So this goes on with any generation. Today's lyrics may be a bit more explicit than 34 years ago. But on the other hand, not that much. So kids are not influenced by the media. They're influenced by their parents and their church. So what are parents saying if anything to these teens? Most parents talk like bumper stickers. Do the right thing. Have you done your homework today? But really meaningful talks between parent and child is as rare as can be. And when you talk about important things to kids like love, sex, growing up, dating, relationships, that's the immediate thing on kids' minds. Maybe 3% of parents have a really in depth conversation. That's about all. It seems like waiting until adolescence is waiting too late to talk

about many of these things. It may be too late, but it's never too late to begin. Just because a kid is 16, you can't say, well, this is no time to talk about something meaningful about relationships. Better start today. Kids want to hear what parents think. The trouble with most parents is they haven't thought about these issues say 15, 14 years. They need to sit down and say, what do I think nowadays? What is my idea of marriage? Do I think marriage is the best thing or is it a so-so thing? Are these teens usually in two parent families? Most teenagers are. You see, it's a myth that everybody's divorced. That is a total myth. If you get into college educated parents, you have the smallest divorce rate. You have the largest divorce rate and people with less than a high school education. Just a reverse of what you would think. So these children and they still are children? Most teenagers live in a two parent house and your next biggest group, obviously, is the young person lives

with a single parent mother. How do parents approach sex now with their children? My key word to that is honesty. We give you some specific examples. Here's where parents get caught in this huge gap between when they grew up in today. Let's take pre-marital sex. This is a question I get constantly from young people. What do you think about pre-marital sex? If we're going to vote, who's for it? Who's against it? But a lot of parents say, well, I can't really say to my child, no pre-marital sex or actions till marriage, or I want you to be chased until you marry because my own life experience is different than that. But they say, I don't want them being promiscuous. I don't want them getting hurt. I don't want them sleeping around. There's the worry about age. I don't know what to say. So where are the words you feel in between the fifties, wait until marriage, the sixties do your own thing. The real trick of it is, is talking about things in human terms with young people. And saying things like, sex is a wonderful thing. It's a lot of pleasure, but there's

some pitfalls here at your age. They are, and then list those. I can remember watching a documentary on TV where a youngster, very sexual, active, probably 14 or 15, was just very point blank about feeling entitled to all that that offered. And she thought the question was absolutely silly. Most kids under 16, 17, 15, depends upon their maturity are just too young to handle sex. It's a powerful drive, but it's a very intimate relationship. And most of them, unfortunately, are not mature enough to handle contraception, which gives you wonderful statistics like one out of 10 teenage girls get pregnant. So when teenagers say to me, well, you know, I think that's ridiculous. If I'm 15, I'm old enough to know what I want to do. I say, yes, if you know what you're doing, you know the emotional outcome, you're, you can handle the physical consequences. And you have the courage to use contraception. I mean, if you can't fall, if those, you can't go one, two, three, you ought to postpone it until you can.

However, it's sometimes not just you making the decision, particularly if they are in a relationship. I think it is always that person making the decisions. Girls over and over again, talk about the pressure guys put on them. They speak over and over again about being uncertain about what they want to do. And a question I get maybe one out of four questions of kids handing questions to me will be, how can I keep my boyfriend, although I want to tell him no to sex? And I say, watch my lips. You say, no, not now. I like you, but I, or I love you, whatever it is you're feeling, you know, but you know when it's obligated, girls have the sense that they're obligated, somehow they should have sex. The only reason to have sex is because you lust for this person. Let me find out how it is that a parent can even talk about relationships with a person and what kinds of changes your levels and maturity will offer as time goes on. You have to look at that

because a 14-year-old is in a different stage of development than an 18-year-old, for example. Some of the research that parents need to use. Can you use the word relationship with 14? Sure, can. Okay. Sure. Oh, they call it relationship. We might call it something else, but they will understand. Parents need to look at early adolescence, which would be most 13, 12, 14-year-olds. They don't have the capability to make mature decisions about sex. Some of the girls, and girls tend to go with guys two years older, by the way. So the girl may be in early adolescence, the guy in late adolescence, two different things. But parents need to know that when you look at girls that age, they tend to talk about having sex even though they didn't really want to, because they didn't know what else to say, or how to get out of it, or what to do. They got close to it. They felt themselves. It was a wonderful feeling, but they weren't ready for it, and they didn't know what to do. So I advise parents that have daughters at age,

is to help that daughter postpone one-on-one dating, until she is minimally 15, or she'll be able to be more assertive and say what's on her mind. This, of course, would work against most of the boys' agendas. Well, that's too bad. We have to talk to sons a little more, too. I was going to say these parents are also raising boys. I'll tell you, if most parents sat down with their son and said, girls have human beings with real feelings. I'm trying to young boys, 11, 12, 13, 14. Boys catch on to this as they get older. But in the early stage of adolescence, I'm not sure whether testosterone turns their brains to mush, but something happens there. Culturally, they also are taught to disdain girls. You're going to a junior high. And the boys, the worst insult is to say to a boy, what are you? A girl? You sissy you. Girl. I mean, that's the terrible thing you could say to them. So as they get that 12, 13, 14, and suddenly they go, girl, girl. They're either like Tari's and coming out of the jungle there.

But unfortunately, they have not developed the other flip of that. Not all boys. Some boys do develop it very very soon in life. But remember, we socialize them not to like girls as a friend until they get a little older. So they're just responding to what we've taught them. We teach them a couple things. Son, to be a man, you have to have sex. Go, go, son, go out here, go get some sex. Then you're a man. You know what? One 15-year-old boy taught me. I was asking about right of passage because I'm curious to what they think. Spoiling North Carolina stood up in an audience and he said, this is how you get to be a man. Okay? First of all, you got to do three things. You got to get drunk. You got to get laid and you got to do something real dangerous. If you can do it the same night, great. Now, just picture what American girl gets a message like that. I mean, parents turn pale. They turn a funny color. They drool when I bring this issue up to them and say, what are you teaching your daughter? But is this guy also the light of some girl's eye? Oh, you bet.

Boy, girls still like bad boys. You know, good guy, sensitive guy still fall into the Wimpo category. They love boys that do dangerous kinds of things, unfortunately, but it's a fact. But parents sat down with sons and expected sons to act, you know, as they expect men to act later, I think everyone would be better off. Boy, suffer a lot from this macho, do something dangerous message because it keeps them out of touch with much of the popular. I don't know how any American male survives junior high. I really don't. When you talk to them individually, they have to jump higher. They have to get the ball in the hoop. They have to have this cool veneer. They have to go down the hallways, punching somebody's arms harder than their arm is punched. As a woman, we cannot imagine the competition they feel at those ages. Is part of all of this pressure a serious factor in the suicide problem and children this age? The competition for boys is. Can you imagine every day you put on your jeans and you go to school and you got to jump higher,

run faster and be tougher than everybody else to be accepted? Think of the failure. You don't make the team. Another thing, by the way, American boys, in junior high, you can still play in the band. But you get into high school and you better get out of the band for the most part. Definitely out of the orchestra. You can be in the band, the marching band, but it's out of the orchestra. And on to the playing fields of America. Michael Cordoba, who's a publisher, said something very insightful in a conversation. He said, why is it American women talk about the caring, loving, sensitive kind of guy? And she walks right by that guy on the arm of the macho tough bad guy. You know, that Richard Jir, the Tom Cruise, when in risky business, that kind of edge to things in top gun. That's why he was so popular in top gun. And he's got a point. As long as we keep raising daughters to watch guys like that and tell sons they have to be there, how can anybody have a sense of who they are? Who is the heroic female? How you see? Who is the heroic female? I can go to high schools and ask who they look up to,

who they want, who's wonderful, who's dynamite. And Thomas, they all talk about Tom Cruise. And he's just up there somewhere in heaven. Women, there's this blank. Okay, Janet Jackson. Okay, now it gets mentioned. Okay. But she's got kind of a tough edge to her these days. Yes. She's not the old Janet. She's not the old Janet. But who is it? Gloria Steinem? Not really. There really is a terrible gap in female models or somebody to look up to heroes. They're just not there. Are they encouraged to be their own hero? No, not at all. You see very little of that. It is very much this teen culture where they're looking to be popular, as I say, well liked. And to be well liked, you give a party yourself. There's nobody can please everybody. I mean, that's impossible. So they don't have a sense. I mean, they talk a lot about self-esteem now on campus, at high school campus. And maybe we'll see an upswing in two three years of kids being more self-confident. I hope so. If they are going to be overachievers,

which is basically what they're describing, they certainly must have some sense of esteem. Hey, dude, but it's, it's ready any moment to slide off that cake like warm icing, you know? I mean, it's there, but you know, it's just a little inch thick that it's a veneer of self-confidence. But then when you get beyond that, they feel this incredible lack. I'm not as smart. I can't do this. I'm not as, I don't look as good. Hearing teenage girls talk about their looks is enough to make tears flow out of the eyes. You know, then a certain kind of blonde America look is what they crave. Kids die their hair in high school. They get fake fingernails. I mean, all the things that have feminist of the early 70s never would have seen for the latter part of the 80s. It means the makeup industry is makeup. Oh, makeup industry is making a fortune. The teenage market now, I mean, you look at the advertising in 17 and co-ed magazine, which would be two magazines they read. You'd be astonished to see the ads on makeup. How to make out a makeover for a 16-year-old,

a makeover? When I remember 17, I also remember articles telling you, you know, how to conduct yourself. What sorts of... Right. Maybe a therapy or whatever that's called. Are they getting... Well, it's the same old thing. It's just dusted up a little bit, but it's the same old things. How to get a guy to love you? How to know when a guy loves you? How to meet the right guy? How to make your eyes look bigger in your thighs thinner or something similar to this? You know, how to make the most of what you have, you know. It's still there. None of it has to say is how to take five minutes to find out who you are. You know, tomorrow take two hours to just do what you want to do. How to set a life course? None of those things. It's all that, you know, make yourself over to get the right kind of guy kind of articles. You bring up a couple things in your book that I think are probably new to what's talked to your kids, kinds of things. You bring up homosexuality,

you talk about sexually transmitted diseases pretty rightly. Right. Right. Remember, those are things on kids' minds, and that's why anything in the book is directly out of kids saying, this is what they wish adults would talk to them about. Because they worry about... Yeah, they think about it. They think about it. Oh, yeah. Let's take back to junior high again. Junior high, such a formating period. I mean, so many things to think of like that. They worry much. They ask questions like, do you think a person is gay if I have a friend who? That kind of thing. But the other reason, not just because they worry about whether they're gay or not is why I put that in there because an important thing, homophobia in high school is awful. I mean, junior high, it's cruel, cruel, unfair. And parents need to be aware of it. After all, I mean, if you look at statistics on who is gay and who isn't, you're talking about about 10% of the population. Some studies say 14, others say eight. Who knows? Is someone who affirms that they are homosexual? So if you look at

that population, all of us are going to know people who sexual orientation is homosexual rather than heterosexual. Got to help young people be less cruel. Then this flip of that is what if it's your son or daughter? Too many parents say, oh, boy, if that was my son or daughter, I'd kick him out of the house. And I, whoa, wait, calm down here. It's your son, your daughter. Show them love and show them understanding. What difference does it make? Yes, we're all worried about AIDS. But acceptance is the most important thing. Or 20 years from now, you won't have a son and daughter. You won't have a relationship with them. And does that surprise some parents seem to be willing to pay? Some parents honestly seem to be willing to pay that. And I feel nothing but pity for them. It's too bad. You only have your, your child is a unique relationship. Don't turn them away because of their sexual preference. It doesn't have anything to do with you anyway. How concerned can a class, I'm sure you're addressing groups of these kids all the time,

how concerned can they be about safe sex if they don't know what any kind is at that point? Well, that's one reason why I think young teens ought to be encouraged to say the least to postpone sex until they're older because of all these issues. Now, safe sex. I mean, you have to be pretty grown up to handle safe sex as you have to use a condom. More than that, I think you have to be the kind of person that knows the other person. I mean, I keep saying person, this is a human relationship. Sex is not an act you commit. It's a relationship between two people. So if this person isn't acquaintance, for instance, all that's right. I don't think you ought to have sex with acquaintances anymore. I think we bid a fond out due to that with the onset of AIDS now. But, you know, AIDS isn't just the most common thing. The thing that most young people need to worry about, unless they're an intravenous drug user, unless they're gay, then of course those two populations had better worry a whole lot about it. They need to abstain

from sex until they're in a monogamous relationship. For other people, the issue today on high school and college campuses is chlamydia, which is a silent kind of sexual transmitted disease for women, particularly. And what's scary about it is a fixed future fertility. But chlamydia is rampant now. It's more than gonorrhea or syphilis is something we've worried about in years now. But chlamydia, and there's a lot of good pamphlets on it at healthcare centers and young people need to go get a pamphlet and read it and understand it. But I'm sure it's difficult to translate you know, pictures of something under slides. Oh, absolutely. Into ones every day. The population of your friends. It isn't. But the biggest thing you can say is in today's world, a condom is absolutely part of having sex today. I mean, it's not, well, I'll think about using a condom. It's absolutely necessary. What kind of stand do the schools themselves take on this? You can't go to the school as it takes to talk about sexually transmitted disease. It's sort of the army school. Schools actually are

encouraged to do sexually transmitted disease programs. And they sound like this. You do it, and you'll get one of these, you know, and they want to make sure that everybody's shuddering at the end of the slide presentation. How's that the old mirror want to scare too? Exactly, like that. I call it the army school of sexually transmitted diseases. Then they don't say, however, if you have a sexual relationship, you can safeguard yourself by using a condom or a spermisidal foam or jelly that has one of the kinds of chemical formulas in them that stops this transmission of sexually transmitted disease. Oh no. We talk about the disease. We don't talk about how you not get it. Straight from the heart, how to talk with your teenagers about love and sex by Dr. Carol Cacell is published by Simon & Schuster. If you have a comment or wish to purchase a cassette copy of this program, write to forum

the Center for Telecommunication Services, the University of Texas at Austin 78712. Our technical producer is David Alvarez. Our production assistant is Christine Drawer. I'm your producer and host Olive Graham. Forum is produced and distributed by the Center for Telecommunication Services, the University of Texas at Austin, and is not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Texas at Austin or this station. This is the Longhorn Radio Network.